


Object Permanence (The Eaten Years Remix)

by echoinautumn (maybetwice)



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Domesticity, Gen Work, Interdependence, Moving In Together, Moving On, Other, Post-Canon, Post-Traumatic Stress, Remix, Shippy Gen, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, hinted relationship, hinted threesome
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-04
Updated: 2014-05-04
Packaged: 2018-01-21 23:25:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,693
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1567796
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maybetwice/pseuds/echoinautumn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>No one is okay after the war, but everyone pretends.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Object Permanence (The Eaten Years Remix)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [iulia_linnea](https://archiveofourown.org/users/iulia_linnea/gifts).
  * Inspired by [A Culinary Horror](https://archiveofourown.org/works/576599) by [iulia_linnea](https://archiveofourown.org/users/iulia_linnea/pseuds/iulia_linnea). 



*

This is peace.

The death toll of three years of war is tremendous, but it is the invisible toll which lingers like mist in a valley. More than a thousand have died, Wizard and Muggle alike, and thousands more displaced. Voldemort died a true death at Hogwarts, there is no ghost of him waiting to return, but the pain left over in the world, Harry thinks, is the way in which Voldemort has truly made himself immortal. 

Some people bury their stories of the war, along with any reminders of those times not so long past. Everyone was touched by the specter of Voldemort’s evil, through death and torture and threats and violence and more. There are those who suffered, those who spoke out and rebelled, and those who silently endured. There are also those who compromised themselves, who did things they had not thought possible, and survived to spend their lives wondering how to reconcile themselves with what they were responsible for. 

So many of them want Harry to understand why they did the things they did, or didn’t, or why they choose the life they have now. Harry tells them all the same thing: that this world cannot move forward without them. They tell him their stories, give to him the thing he cannot share with anyone but Ron and Hermione, the people who lived those things with him. 

Harry remembers every one of them the very best he can, even the ones that are too heavy for him to carry, and decides how to live his life with his own burdens.

Ron goes home to his surviving family, to reconcile with Percy and mourn their brother and work in the joke shop. Everyone needs a laugh these days, even a cheap one bought in a store. Maybe Ron needs it more than any of them.

Hermione goes back to Hogwarts. She goes to finish what she started, to prove to herself and anyone else that she can have the things she wanted for her life before. She throws herself into her studies, lives in an empty dormitory, and writes to Ron and Harry daily. Some days, she writes twice.

Harry starts Auror training. There are all these sayings he’s heard before, those inspirational things, that the past is another land, that there’s no river he can step in twice. Whatever the reason, all he knows that he wants is to move forward and never look back into the past. Maybe, _probably_ , he’s just running.

They settle into the routine of their new lives, but Hermione’s owls turn to extended Hogsmeade visits, sneaking out in the middle of the night to their shared room at the Hog’s Head. There’s not a single teacher who would stop her from leaving school grounds, but Hermione likes to pretend that it’s the same way as before. It’s a safe life they lead now, but Ron Apparates to Harry’s tiny flat in the North three, then four and five, times a week and spends the night. The lights of London unnerve him, he says. They remind him of the weeks in the attic in the Burrow, watching wandlight from the window while his family home was ransacked, searching for him. Besides, George wants to be alone sometimes, while Ron needs someone who understands. So, he comes to Harry, who needs Ron for all the same reasons, and more. They stay up late, read Hermione’s letters together, and fall asleep on the couch with the radio on. Ron can’t bring himself to give up the London flat, but his things are at Harry’s and so is he, just about every night.

It’s no surprise when Hermione finishes her NEWTs and moves in, too. She asks Harry directly, all business-like with her job offer in hand and a proposed rental agreement written up in accordance with current law, and is indignant when he laughs and rips up the contract waiting for his personal mark. It felt inevitable that she would ask, or he would ask her. Harry doesn’t know how to live without the two of them nearby, without their steady presence and sleeping breath on his neck. It’s been the three of them for so very long, doing things that no one else will ever be burdened with. Harry doesn’t even try anymore.

Hermione does much of the cooking, but cooking in their flat is different than cooking in a tent. There are more things they can afford to buy from the store, but she chooses spartan recipes and solicits suggestions from their friends. She tries several of Luna’s recipes, but they intervene after some sort of monstrous mushroom pie with a crust mushy in some parts and rock hard in others. Now they rotate, even if Ron’s nights mean that they’ll probably eat from his favorite takeaway nearby. 

It’s not always perfect, but it’s exactly what he needs, and what Ron and Hermione need, too.

Every day, he comes home and Hermione is already there. She leaves for work a full half hour before either he or Ron, who works until the shop closes at six. She greets them both every day with a list of things they need to work on, but her bossiness is tempered with a smile. Hermione seems relieved when they both make it home. 

Ron spends more and more time thinking about leaving George alone to the joke shop, whether he wants to join the Ministry, too. Jokes weren’t really his thing, Harry overhears him telling Hermione one evening from their sitting room. And besides, George is starting to talk to him a little like he’s Fred, like he’ll understand the world the way his twin did, and is getting frustrated because Ron can never be Fred. Maybe he’ll apply for Auror training. There are always more dark wizards to track down, the war trials have already begun, and there are more who need to be found. 

Harry doesn’t listen more than that. Ron is afraid of following Harry for the rest of his life, always cast in shadow, and he’s learned enough to allow Ron to make his choices on his own, without Harry’s help. Sure enough, when he’s ready, Ron tells him, and instead of telling him what he thinks is the right thing to do, Harry asks what it is he can do to help. 

Months pass. Harry doesn’t want to tell anyone in his cohort that he’s living with his two best friends in one small flat, but he’s starting to feel safe when he stays overnight in his office with paperwork, and he’s started going to the twice-monthly nights at the Leaky Cauldron with his colleagues. He feels capable again, and a little less alone. The Death Eater trials are endless. Harry spends more time testifying than in the field, and almost more than he spends on paperwork. It becomes easier to stare down Death Eaters, to speak without hearing his voice rattle with hatred. 

Ron tells George that he’s leaving during the Christmas holiday, that he’s going to start his training in the new year. George wasn’t bitter about it, Ron tells them over the takeaway containers littering the top of their kitchen table. He even seemed happy, mentioning something about Lee Jordan leaving the WWN, buying out Fred’s half of the joke shop and leaving George to open the new location in Hogsmeade. Ron cheerfully announces around a mouthful of samosa that he’s scored higher than his entire cohort on the baseline exams for Auror training.

Between her own daily work, Hermione finally schedules her first meeting with a group of recently-freed House Elves and drafts her first list of talking points for a Ministry meeting that hasn’t been scheduled yet. She’d forgotten what it was like to feel engaged with something she has been passionate about for so long, she says, sweeping her hair back, finally unselfconscious of the light glimmering against the scar on her arm. Her eyes light up again, brighter than ever before.

Little by little, things settle into a new routine. Fewer people want to talk about what they’re doing to get on with their lives; they just move on with their life and let things fade into the past. Grief is a strange creature, sometimes content to lie still and fade into the distance, and sometimes rising from the deep, still very much alive. Harry feels it stir up in his chest when he least expects it, but he and Ron and Hermione and everyone they know, they all learn to live with it. 

Ron and Hermione tell Harry what he has known for years now: that they will leave him to start out on their own. He doesn’t mind, at least not after he thinks through it all and remembers that he wants them to be happy, that they will take care of each other. That he is capable of taking care of himself. Harry helps them when they go to look for a flat of their own, picks out a sofa for them, buys them a housewarming gift, and is surprised when it no longer feels like he’s betraying the part of himself that once couldn’t live without them. 

Then, to his own surprise, moving day comes and goes without incident. There isn’t even a twinge in his gut when Harry closes the door on his empty flat. It’s quiet and safe. For the first time, Harry knows that without reserve.

There are nightmares and misfired instincts when he looks at the shadows in the corner of his bedroom, and he knows they may never truly leave. It isn’t until then, however, while setting his keys on the table and musing on his solitude, that Harry realizes what Ron and Hermione must have known before; that _this_ is peace. 

Harry thinks of his life as it has been, the years of healing that have passed like a dream and the years yet to come, and who he has become because of them. 

He is alive. 

The war is over, and he is not the same as he was when it ended. 

And Harry breathes out.

**Author's Note:**

> I loved the idea of remixing the original story, which is just a snapshot of life for Harry, Ron and Hermione, into something where the scene (and all its humor) remains in place, but with added context. When I read the original drabble, I had lots of questions (why do they live together? why would Hermione accept a recipe from Luna?) that reminded me of a vague scenario that's lived in my head for a long time! Thank you for the opportunity to write that!


End file.
